Chapter 87
“MOMMY! MOMMY! WAKE up! Listen!”
Chloe’s eyes flutter open. There is a high, ear-piercing primate-call sound coming from the balcony. The chimps on the balcony seem to be tussling with one another.
She sits up.
Chloe reaches out and wraps her arms firmly around her son. As they watch the animals jostle and shriek, she recognizes the familiar sound the chimp is making. It is a warning call—a kind of siren that chimps emit when a threat is close.
One is warning the others not to enter?
After a moment, the apes break it up. The largest of them—who, bizarrely, seems to be wearing a ragged old red hat—knuckle-walks to the balcony railing and hops onto its edge, beckoning the others to follow. A moment later, all three of them slip over the railing and are gone.
Chloe expels a long, shivery breath. First, the chimps wanted to attack, but then, suddenly, they stopped.
Attila. How could it have been him? How could it not have been him—how many chimps are there at large in this town?
Chloe sits on the floor with Eli in the dark. Outside the shattered window, she can hear people yelling, people singing and chanting in Central Park. It is as if human beings are regressing, becoming primitive again. Maybe human beings will start reacting to the pheromones now. Create human zombies to join the four-footed ones. Anything is possible.
Eli struggles in her arms like a giant fish. Struggles to escape her grip.
“No. Stay here,” Chloe says in a curt whisper.
“I’ll be right back.”
She thinks he needs to use the bathroom. But he returns a moment later and hands her something. It is the bowl of popcorn.
“Daddy said I should take care of you while he’s gone,” he says. “Here.”
She kisses him.
There comes a heavy, pounding knock on the door.
“United States Army,” a voice shouts. “Is there anyone in there?”
Chloe scoops up Eli and rushes to the door. A young blond soldier with glasses smiles in the glow of his flashlight as she lets him in.
“Thank God you’re alive, ma’am,” he says, lowering his rifle. “Somebody turned off the electric fence, and they got in through the basement somehow. We think we have it under control now. Are you hurt? Is your son all right?”
“We’re fine,” Chloe says. “Chimpanzees tried to get in through the balcony, but then they left.”
“So that’s what they were,” the soldier says, shaking his head. “I knew I saw something jump over the perimeter fence from the second-floor balcony.”
“Are many people hurt? The other families?”
“I’d be lying if I said no,” the soldier said. “Three families on the fourth floor seem to have taken the worst of it. There have been about half a dozen casualties so far. We’re still sweeping. In the meantime…,” the soldier says, offering her something.
Chloe just stares at it.
It is a flat black pistol.
“We can’t be everywhere at once, ma’am. You might need to use it to drive off the next wave.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then you might really need it,” the soldier says, slapping it into her hand and turning to go.
The gun lies dark, cold, and heavy in her hand. She hates to touch it. She knows all too well what he meant about needing it. He meant that she should use it on Eli and herself rather than be eaten alive.
“Mommy, is that a real gun?” says Eli.
“No.”
Chapter 88
THE MESSAGE, AS it has come to be called at the White House, is delivered the next day at 0900, and put on a loop to repeat for the rest of the day.
On all TVs and radios, programming is interrupted. The message is broadcast through megaphones on helicopters and through the speakers on army vehicles roving the streets.
An image of the Oval Office appears on the forty-foot LED screen at One Times Square. The forty-fifth president of the United States of America, Marlena Grace Hardinson, sits behind the desk. Her smoky, dark green eyes look resolutely into the camera, and in a slow, careful voice, she begins.
“My fellow Americans, I would like to say good morning to you,” the president says. “But as we all know, this isn’t a very good morning for many of us. We are currently experiencing a dark moment in the annals of human history.
“I say this from hard-won personal knowledge. My own daughter, Allison, died yesterday. She was killed by our family pet. This is a tragedy that I and my husband, Richard, may never recover from. But we need to go on. We all do, and we will. That is what the United States of America does.
“Despite the efforts of our military, all across our nation, and indeed all across our planet, animals continue to attack human beings savagely, and without cessation. Fortunately, after much careful research, our scientists believe they have discovered some of the responsible factors underlying these attacks.
“For many years, there has been much heated debate over industrial pollution and its contribution to global warming. As we researched the dangers of industrial activity on climate change, it seems we were simultaneously overlooking another problem that has been developing unnoticed right under our noses for years. This problem amounts to the destabilization of the biosphere.
“It has come to light that the aberrant animal behavior may be directly related to human activity. The recent buildup of hydrocarbon-rich petroleum products, coupled with radiation from cellular phones, has caused changes in the environment, which these animals are reacting to. It has been explained to me that the hydrocarbons normally found in the human environment have subtly morphed into a substance that many animals’ sensory faculties are interpreting as a pheromone, altering these animals’ behaviors. These new airborne chemical particulates are causing animals to swarm together and attack human beings.
“In the interest of public safety, we must do everything in our power to reverse this process. That is why I am asking for the people of the United States of America to come together with the rest of the world this morning. Though I know it will be a great hardship, for the next two weeks, we must cease the use of all cellular phones and electricity, and cease the burning of fossil fuels. In essence, we need to clear the air, literally, of both radiation and petroleum by-products if a first step in ending this disaster is to be made.
“I have just signed an emergency executive order stipulating that all cellular communication towers and power plants in the United States of America will be shut down as of midnight tonight. Except for hospitals and designated emergency personnel, the use of portable generators is banned. The driving of vehicles will also be prohibited, and any violators are subject to arrest. The heads of other major industrial nations, among them the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Japan, have agreed to do the same. You will be informed of any and all further instructions. This two-week cessation is essential to allow our scientists to confirm the causes of human-animal conflict, and for us to formulate a coordinated plan for the future. Thank you for your cooperation. God bless America, and God bless us all.”
Chapter 89
WHEN THE PRESIDENT’S speech came on, Charles Groh and I were downstairs in the Navy Mess, drinking coffee and trying to brainstorm. It was more of a light brainshower—we were too spent and frazzled to stir up a storm.
Really, we were just waiting and watching until the minute hand oozed into place to form the perfect backward L of nine o’clock, and we followed the scuttling commotion into the adjoining stainless steel kitchen and gathered with the crowd of kitchen staff where they stood, vigilant and hushed, beneath a TV mounted to the wall.
When the broadcast was over, the crowd dissolved into anxious murmurs.
“The power’s going out, and the army is going to lock people up for driving their cars?” said a portly black chef. Somebody switched off the TV. “That’s the brilliant new plan?”
He seemed skeptical. Everyone did. I was skepti
cal, too, and I was the primary architect of the brilliant new plan.
“How does it feel?” said Dr. Groh as we arrived back at our table in the nearly empty dining room.
“How does what feel?”
“To finally get what you want,” he said. “You’ve been trying to warn people for how long? A decade, almost? Now they’re listening. It’s got to be pretty weird to finally get what you want.”
“I just hope it’s what we need.”
I drank the last of my coffee and looked at the sludge in the bottom of the paper cup as though I were a gypsy reading tea leaves. I thought about it. My feelings were definitely of the mixed variety. I was glad the idiotic carpet-bombing campaign had been stopped, but the problem was that my petroleum-radiation-pheromone theory was still just that: a theory.
There was a strong possibility I could be completely wrong, or only half right. It was impossible to rule out other factors contributing to the problem. It was even possible that radiation, electricity, and petroleum had nothing to do with it—that we’d just been barking up the wrong tree. (Ha-ha.) Science is like that. It doesn’t have the answers. It guesses, tests, and guesses again. I had my guesses, and now they were going to be tested. Turning off the world’s lights was an unprecedented, historic event. What if it didn’t work?
“It feels like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, Charles,” I said. “I’m pretty much scared shitless.”
Dr. Groh shrugged.
When we returned to the Cabinet Room for another round of meetings, everyone seemed dazed, exhausted. But it was the kind of upbeat dazed and exhausted you see in people racing to meet a deadline, the pizza-box-and-black-coffee all-nighter, the burned-out look of dedicated people in the final push of getting something difficult done.
When the president walked in, a spontaneous burst of applause filled the crowded room.
But as the energy secretary whistled through pinched fingers, I kept my hands at my sides. This wasn’t the end of something. This was just the very beginning of what I anticipated was going to be a long, hard journey. I couldn’t quite join in the self-congratulation just yet.
Because letting the public know was one thing.
Getting them to comply was quite another.
In order for this to work, people had to actually stop using electricity and driving cars.
Would they?
It all depended upon people observing the new emergency ordinances. Realistically, there were nowhere near enough boots on the ground to enforce these contingency laws—so all we could do was to count on people to cooperate. In officer training, one of the first things they tell you is to never give an order unless you’re sure it will be obeyed. If a law cannot be enforced, it’s easy for it to crumble. As Frederick the Great said, diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.
As the president found her seat in the middle of the room, I tried to think of other instances in which Americans had been called upon to sacrifice for the good of the country. Or of the world, as the case may be. World War II is a good example. I also remembered all the charity and camaraderie that had abounded in New York after 9/11. It could happen again, right?
I crossed my fingers under the table as President Hardinson cleared her throat. I hoped so. I prayed so.
It was all up to us now.
Chapter 90
BECAUSE OF ELECTRICAL load and supply concerns, large-scale power grids take time to shut down without damaging the equipment. It isn’t until twelve hours after the president’s stated deadline that the US grid has fully powered down.
The rolling blackout catches some people unawares. Water pumps fail in some areas and people are stuck in elevators as everything grinds to a standstill.
And then there is silence, and darkness.
But most people are ready for it.
By 2100 EDT, every power plant, airline, and factory in the United States and Europe is powered down, as well as every commercial cellular communications site. In the United States, army units are deployed to stop all vehicular traffic. For the first time ever, the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems satellite that monitors nighttime data shows only blackness where those twinkling crystalline spiderwebs of light used to be: New York, London, Paris. Dark.
At the break of rosy-fingered dawn in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda, Barbara Hatfield wakes inside a shipping container that her zoological research center used for storage. The primatologist locked herself in it almost three weeks ago in order to avoid being ripped asunder by gorillas or the rhinos that appeared out of nowhere.
She is in big trouble. The container is a broiler by day and an icebox at night. Her food has run out. There is only one gallon of water left. She is weak, hungry, dehydrated. Isolated from the goings-on in the rest of the world, she does not understand why no one has come to her rescue. Why has the supply plane not been here in three weeks? Isolation. Hunger. Deprivation. Fear. She is feverish, hallucinatory, the borders between reality, nightmare, and dream blurring and dissolving. She is being punished in some way by God, abandoned in the jungle to suffer and die.
With great effort, she rolls over onto her hands and knees, crawls to the hole in the container by one of the hinges, and peeks through the slit of vision it offers her.
What she sees amazes her. In the clearing near the edge of the tree line, she can see the gorillas. But the females are present again. When the craziness started, all the females seemed to have disappeared. Now they are back. The gorillas are no longer menacing. They are doing what they usually do: eating, mating, playing with their children, lazing in the grass.
Barbara stands on spindly, weak legs and unlatches the container’s door. She steps outside. The gorillas look up at her. Barbara rears back, stumbling. The hollow metal clangs and drums under her staggering feet, and she grasps the edge of the doorway, catching herself from falling.
Should she head back to the safety of the container? Are they going to attack again?
Then she stops and watches as the gorillas slowly lumber back into the jungle, vanishing into the trees and ground fog.
In Delhi, the sun trickles over a sea of flat rooftops, over a dark and quiet city. Strict government enforcement helps ensure compliance with the global energy ban. The two new power plants east of the city have been shut down, along with all the communications towers, the filling stations.
In Yamuna Pushta, the sprawling slum east of the city, the usually traffic-clogged streets are empty of everything but pushcarts and rickshaws. The migrant people who inhabit the slum tentatively peek out from the cracks in their hovels. They have been easy pickings for the roving packs of pariah dogs and jungle cats that have overtaken the city.
As they peer out from their hiding places, they see movement in the streets. Animals—leopards, tigers—are moving northward. A soot-faced child ducks fearfully beneath a window, then his head rises again to look at a passing leopard: patient, lazy, its shoulder blades undulating, its tail a pendulum—it is walking away. The big cats are moving out of the city, returning to the jungles, where they belong.
All around the world, it is happening. In London, in Paris, in Rome, in Beirut, in Iowa City. Animals are leaving the cities. Massive packs of animals are dissipating, going home like a crowd after a ball game.
Chapter 91
CHLOE HAS BEEN up for two hours when the sun rises in New York on the second day of the global power freeze. With the electricity off, she lights a candle, and spends the flat, empty stretch of time going through family photographs. She is glad she included them when she packed her bags for the government evacuation headquarters.
She smiles to herself as she slowly turns the pages of her photo album. She can’t decide which is her favorite: the wedding photos or the shot of Oz at the hospital, holding Eli for the first time. Or the one of a two-year-old Eli chasing a seagull at a picnic on Jones Beach.
She settles on the wedding picture of Oz waiting for her at the altar, a neon-blue Hawaiian shir
t under his tuxedo jacket. It is the expression on his face, she thinks. His smile, the glimmer in his brown eyes—they are a freeze-frame of joy and life. God, she misses him. God, does it hurt to be apart.
But she cannot go back to the panic and depression. She has to be hopeful. They will be together soon, she knows.
Because it’s working.
The plan is working.
The night before, she and some of the other scientists had gone onto the roof of the building. She had held Eli’s warm tiny hand in hers, and they looked up into the sky. They could see the stars.
To Chloe, the starscape above was like the night sky in her girlhood home on her grandfather’s farm in the French countryside. Eli was a city kid—he had never seen so many stars. She pointed out the constellations to him, and the planets. Mercury, Venus. Jupiter, Saturn—those winking faraway giants. The galaxy unfurled in a fluttering ribbon of star smoke.
They could see the stars, of course, because every light in the city was off. Even the streetlights. There was not a drop of electricity running in the city’s veins. Chloe had listened for any remnant of the great vibration that had once been New York City. It was gone. There was only darkness and silence. The city was a coral shell of darkness and silence.
And holding Eli’s hand on the roof, Chloe had felt warm tears sliding out of the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks. Her tears had come partly from sadness, and partly from the cold joy of seeing all this terrifying, useless, lonely beauty.
Progress is being made, she thinks now, tracing a picture of her husband’s face with a finger. She can feel it in her bones. They are going to make it through this.
After breakfast, Chloe decides to take Eli onto their terrace for some fresh air. Just entering the room where the animals had almost gotten in makes her palms tingle with sweat, but she wills herself through it. Using a broom, she sweeps away the broken glass from the French doors, and then she opens them, and they are outside.